


always alone, always together

by rentingstars



Series: a study of dungeons, daddies, and their sons [1]
Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, No Dialogue, gimme that sweet sweet angst baby, i love my bois so much, no beta we die like men, ok it's not as angsty as it could have been, ok maybe i cheated a little on that one, petition to make anthony burch give the oaks the development they deserve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25298443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rentingstars/pseuds/rentingstars
Summary: Three brief insights into the psyches of Lark and Sparrow before they enter the Forgotten Realms.orI, a tired idiot who hasn't written anything in years, decide that if Anthony Burch refuses to give me the backstory that I crave, I'll just pull something straight out of the dumpster fire I call a brain and post it for the world to see and judge me with.
Relationships: Lark Oak & Sparrow Oak, Nicolas Close & Lark Oak & Sparrow Oak & Terry Jr. & Grant Wilson
Series: a study of dungeons, daddies, and their sons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832653
Comments: 5
Kudos: 46





	always alone, always together

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a lot of this when I was feeling bitter about things that I've experienced/done, so if any of this seems sloppy, it's probably bc I'm bad at grammar and bc I was feeling angry. Thanks for reading <3.

Lark and Sparrow are 10 and in the fifth grade.

Sparrow stares absentmindedly at a blank worksheet that was handed to him by an underpaid, overworked teacher who, to be frank, didn’t give a single shit. This year, just like the year before, the Oaks were (likely deliberately) separated in every single class (except for science, but that had soon changed after they blew up the entire classroom and the neighboring history classroom).

He knows he could do the problems on the worksheet with the barest minimum of effort. He had mastered exponents in third grade, when him and Lark had decided that exponents were a lot cooler than multiplication, in the same way that multiplication was a lot cooler than addition. They had gone online and laughed through multiple videos of old, saggy men trying to explain why anything to the zeroth power was one, then had stolen a fifth grade teacher's notes about exponents from an unattended classroom during recess because they decided that mocking the bad haircuts of the math instructors in the videos was starting to get boring.

At that moment, watching his frazzled math teacher desperately struggling to get his absolutely idiotic class to shut up, Sparrow, from the deepest, darkest recesses of his dead heart, decides that exponents, or at least school exponents, absolutely sucked ass.

(not long after that, his math teacher will bring up both his and Lark's prowess in mathematics to other teachers, who will tell their own tales of two mature yet immature boys who excel in all of their subjects without applying themselves, and eventually their exasperation will reach the ears of an equally frustrated and tired counselor)

Lark and Sparrow are 11 and in a counselor's office.

Their father is also with them, nervously adjusting his glasses and shifting to find a more comfortable position on an inhumanely uncomfortable chair.

Yellow fluorescent lights color the room an even uglier shade of sickly mustard green as a dusty, fingerprint-laden mirror propped up on one of the walls somehow manages to make the already small room look even smaller. Lark thinks that if he had to spend nine hours a day stuck in this pathetic excuse of an office, he would be just as terrible as his counselor (which doesn't change the fact that he still hates her and her condescending guts).

His counselor (who he can't and won't remember the name of) stares at their dad from her far more comfortable chair as she starts to prattle on about how _gifted_ and _talented_ his children were and how proud he should be of them, as if Lark can't hear her, or as if the word _accelerated_ would be too hard for their paltry ten year old brains to understand. Lark grips Sparrow's hand tighter as he stares daggers at his counselor, which she doesn't notice, because she's not looking (because no adult ever really _looks_ at them instead of just dismissive glances and placating words and blank stares).

Lark is shaken out of his reprieve when he feels a warm hand settle on his shoulder. His dad asks if _you two boys would like to take up Mrs. Wellington's offer_ and _if they would like to think about this decision for a little while because it's a difficult decision for anyone to make, let alone two young boys like yourselves_. Lark looks to Sparrow and knows what their answer is going to be as soon as he sees his own anger and frustration reflected in Sparrow's eyes.

(not long after that, there's a flurry of tests, grades, and papers all about theorems and rules that he and Sparrow have learned ages ago and a stack of paperwork and documents for Henry and Mercedes Oak-Garcia, who smile in pride when a piece of paper dropped in their mailbox one blazing hot Sunday morning informs the Oak-Garcia family that their two talented sons will skip both the sixth and seventh grade)

Lark and Sparrow are 12 and in the eighth grade.

Sparrow slouches on a blue plastic chair attached to a small pseudo-wooden desk as his (new and not so improved) teacher drones on about polynomials. He stares at a clock hung on a white wall and watches at it ticks down one excruciating second at a time. He can't tell how long it's been since he entered the classroom, pulled his worn textbook out, and opened his notebook to an indeterminate page, the same way he does every day in this monotonous hellscape. It's almost funny how nothing has changed between fifth grade and eighth grade, except perhaps the whispers that his dumbass classmates think he and Lark can't hear, about how _those weird, annoying kids skipped, like, three grades or something_ and _they're always fucking fighting, I don't know why man, how the fuck would I know why they have anger issues or some shit_.

God.

He hates this school.

Well, admittedly, not everything about school is 100% terrible. He and Lark have decided that they ~~like~~ tolerate exactly three people in West Rock Elementary. Nick, who looks like a walking Hot Topic, lets them eat some of his secret stash of sour gummi worms whenever they want and they begrudgingly admire his unwavering desire to stick it to the system at all times of the day. Grant, who has some clear daddy issues that even Lark and Sparrow won't get within 40 feet of, plays Fortnite and PUBG with them and lets them fight many people (only inside his games, unfortunately). TJ, who somehow has even clearer daddy issues than Grant, lets them ride on his back and helps them make various plans to destroy the entire world.

Sparrow, in an uncharacteristic moment of weakness, acknowledges that maybe signing up for a lousy elementary school soccer team was the best decision that he and Lark have ever made, because he doesn't know if they would have ever belonged anywhere if they hadn't.

That vulnerability is quickly pushed aside when his teacher tries to catch him in the act of having better things to do than listen to her idiocy and asks him a pointed question about the quadratic formula, which he answers in the rudest tone he can muster.

(not long after that, he and Lark are being driven to their regional soccer tournament along with three other teens, their fathers, and their daddy issues, when a roiling swirl of dark purple greets them as they crest over a hill, and as they hurtle towards the unknown, everything goes dark)

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see more dndads stuff, follow me on @rentingstars on tumblr + insta, where I put a lot of my headcanons abt the dads and their bois. Also, go follow @blu3boi / @gayblu3boi, their art/writing really gave me the motivation I needed to finish this.


End file.
